Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Einleitung

Die Korrespondenz zwischen Anthon Magens und Hugo Schuchardt wurde von Kristoffer Friis Bøegh bearbeitet, kommentiert und eingeleitet.

Bedeutung

Anthon Magens (1821–1898) was a relative of Joachim Melchior Magens, author of the world’s first printed grammar of a creole language (Magens 1770). According to Ryberg (1945: 358), Anthon Fr. Magens appears in the 1857 census as a 36-year-old physician born on St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, today’s US Virgin Islands (Van Rossem 2022). Few other biographical details are currently known (see also Dyhr 2001: 100–102).

Schuchardt contacted A. Magens to collect material on what is now mainly called Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, also known as Carriols. In the past, it was widely referred to in scholarly literature as Negerhollands (lit. “Negro Dutch”).

In Schuchardt’s manuscript 11.1.8, page 114, he is listed as “Justizr. Dr. A. Magens” alongside the dates: 3 July ‘82 (Schuchardt to A. Magens), August 82 (Schuchardt to A. Magens), 20 February (Schuchardt to A. Magens, presumably 1883) in which he sent printed material, noted as “Kreuzb.”, and a book on 19 April (Schuchardt to A. Magens, probably also 1883).

According to the letter and the manuscript 11.1.8, Schuchardt had apparently first tried to contact Erik Pontoppidan (see Stein 2014), a physician on St. Thomas in the 1880s who had published an article on Virgin Islands Dutch Creole (ISO 639-3: dcr), but received no reply. A. Magens replied to Schuchardt on 14 August 1882 (in German) with a few clarifications regarding the Pontoppidan materials (Letter 6779).

A. Magens wrote again to Schuchardt on 23 February 1883 (Letter 6779a, mistakenly catalogued under “Murgens”, 7607, in Wolf 1993) with nearly seven pages in Carriols, which he said he had sourced from a native speaker, but did not gloss. Among the linguistic material, A. Magens included a few pages in English. In this English letter, Magens references acquaintances named Schou (of Danish origin, cf. Ryberg 1945: 483). A. Magens also recommends that Schuchardt contact “Captain J. F. C. de Gomez, a former teacher of languages”, which resulted in the letters 03854-03855 containing literature to consult and linguistic examples.

Schuchardt published the material from A. Magens as part of his 1914 article “Zum Negerholländischen von St. Thomas” in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde. The text and footnotes in Schuchardt’s article contain a scholarly debate with D.C. Hesseling on a number of points from the A. Magens letter (as the 1883 text has since become known in the literature). A decade earlier, Hesseling had published a volume on Carriols (Hesseling 1905). Schuchardt’s (1914) article is followed by a postscript by Hesseling (1914), which includes a translation of the letter into Dutch and some annotations. J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong viewed the A. Magens letter as an example of authentic Carriols and used it while doing his own fieldwork in St. Thomas and St. John between 1922–1923 (Van Rossem 2024: 24). The A. Magens letter (as found in Schuchardt 1914) was reprinted and translated into English in the 1996 volume edited by Cefas van Rossem and Hein van der Voort, Die Creol Taal (pp. 238–251). The present edition corrects transcription errors and also includes material not previously published.

Acknowledgements: The work presented here is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation, grant CF23-1162.

Bibliographie

Dyhr, Sebastian Adorján. 2001. “Grammatik over det creolske sprog” af Joachim Melchior Magens i en lingvistisk og historisk kontekst [“Grammar of the Creole language” by Joachim Melchior Magens in a linguistic and historical context]. Aarhus University MA thesis.

Hesseling, D[irk C[hristian]. 1905. Het Negerhollands der Deense Antillen. Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandse taal in Amerika. Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff.

Hesseling, D[irk C[hristian]. 1914. Naschrift. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 33. 135–142.

Magens, Joachim Melchior. 1770. Grammatica over det Creolske Sprog, som bruges paa de trende Danske Eilande, St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jans i America [Grammar of the Creole language used on the three Danish islands of St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John in America]. Kiobenhavn: Kongelige Waysenhusets Bogtrykkerie.

Ryberg, Hugo. 1945. A list of the names of inhabitants. The Danish Westindian Islands (the Virgin Islands) from 1650 – ca. 1825. Copenhagen.

Schuchardt, Hugo. 1914. Zum Negerholländischen von St. Thomas. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 33. 123–135.

Stein, Peter. 2014. Dr. med. Erik Pontoppidan und das Negerhollands. In Philip Krämer (ed.), Ausgewählte Arbeiten der Kreolistik des XIX. Jahrhunderts. Selected works from XIXth century creolistics. Emilio Teza, Thomas Russell, Erik Pontoppidan, Adolpho Coelho, 109–121. Hamburg: Buske.

Van Rossem, Cefas. 2022. Ep. 10. De brief van Anthon Magens. Di hou creol – podcast over Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. May 28, 2022.

Van Rossem, Cefas. 2024. The suspicion confirmed: J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong’s 1923 linguistic fieldwork in St. Thomas and St. John on Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. Scandinavian Studies in Language 15(2). 16–55. https://doi.org/10.7146/sss.v15i2.152268

Van Rossem, Cefas & Hein van der Voort. 1996. Die Creol taal. 250 years of Negerhollands texts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Wolf, Michaela. 1993. Hugo Schuchardt Nachlaß. Schüssel zum Nachlaß des Linguisten und Romanisten Hugo Schuchardt (1842-1927). Graz: Leykam.

Herkunft der Digitalisate

Die von Anthon Magens an Hugo Schuchardt verschickten Briefe befinden sich in:

Universitätsbibliothek Graz Abteilung für Sondersammlungen